A Certain Fascination
by Random Tea Room
Summary: Post war, Hermione/Draco. She didn't even try to find her feelings with him under the sheets. Instead she marveled at how she was about to break another heart.


**Title:** A Certain Fascination

**Summary: **Post war, Hermione/Draco. She didn't even try to find her feelings with him under the sheets. Instead she marveled at how she was about to break another heart.

**Rating: **T

**Notes:** Found this from last year and thought some of you might enjoy it. Cliché bad boy/broken girl angst, but I'd be a liar if I didn't say I can never get enough.

* * *

Her eyes focused on a foggy globe that was situated on the bedside table next to her. It was an ominous looking deep gray that swirled around, creating what looked like ghoulish faces in fleeting intervals. She briefly thought that Moody would have kept something like this in his room, but she forced her mind to blank after she realized he was yet another one they had lost. In the wake of the victory, it was hard not to find blame and guilt in every memory.

So she flipped herself over, resting her head on the pillow as she waited in the drafty cottage on the mountain. She had no doubt that in other rooms were more items like the globe but worse and more Dark. The man whom she was waiting for was notorious for revamping the Dark items trade even after the war. It didn't irk her when she thought about it; on the contrary she admired his skilled authority of his business. Besides, he rarely directly interacted with the Dark items. Only one had he been maimed, she knew, as she recalled the scar on his hip from being stabbed with an enchanted scepter that did not heal with magical powers.

The door opened then and relief flooded through her body along with a lively burning in her blood. She was about to be able to feel without thinking, indulge is a satisfactory pleasure that would distract her.

He wasted no time with formalities - however that was more of her wish than his - and slipped off his cloak but leaving the rest, knowing very well she enjoyed taking off his robes. She rose to meet him, eagerly drawing him in and closing her eyes. She hardly opened them again, her hands searing as they gripped onto his shoulders then dipped to his chest. Within seconds, her robes were gone and undergarments discarded, and their limbs tangled together as the sheets swallowed them in.

* * *

When they were both satisfied, she tucked herself under the silk sheets and angled her face toward the canvassing ceiling. He turned his head toward her, and they talked. She loved that it came easy - small talk, of course, never very personal - but it was beautiful because there were no expectations. He told her about his shitty day, and she explained that she had finally taken a leave from her job at the Ministry.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked, but the lack of surprise at her temporary resignation enlightened her.

"I don't know," she replied truthfully, tracing the cobwebs he was too lazy to enchant away. "I know I'll go back someday. It's just not right for me now. I think I'll travel."

Truthfully she had been thinking about taking a trip out to visit her Bulgarian friend, Viktor Krum. But she wasn't ready to indulge her counterpart in that little tidbit from her past, especially lest he become jealous. She had always hoped he viewed their tryst as she, but she saw it in his eyes - he wanted to love someone. And she didn't want to - couldn't - be loved right now.

"I think in a different life, you could be a traveller," he said, and she glanced at him questioningly, but his eyes were closed. He continued, "Just travel and learn about it all - spend your days in thousand year old libraries and dining with the natives."

It was sad how appealing that sounded to her, to live the rest of her life going in and out of lives, being ephemerally touched by so many. But it wasn't her, and no matter how much she currently wished he wasn't, he was right. She cared about too many people as much as it hurt, had too many expectations for herself that it was, at times, blistering and blinding.

"I like the sound of that," she admitted to him. She considered asking him if he would go, but she couldn't. He had a life made here and a heart too needing. She couldn't fix someone when she could hardly find a way to heal herself. Better to avoid damaging anyone else or at least impeding their process of recovery. She hastily though of Ron who was fulfilling his wish of following the Chudley Cannons throughout their season. It may have been his own way of coping, but it disgusted her that she could feel so broken and lifeless, and he could project his experiences into something else. They were, like her job, on an indefinite break.

"You're not going to ask me to go?"

She hadn't expected that, for him to be so forward with her. Turning to face the window and obscuring him completely from her sight, she didn't speak. Selfishly, she wanted him to go if not for the small talk and the company and the sex. But traveling with someone implied commitment she could never make with him. She would have to go back to her old life eventually.

"I'm tired," she told him, her voice small, and she did feel confident that he would not press the matter even though it hurt him.

She head the flick of his wand as the doors locked and blinds pulled shut. Slowly, he lapsed into a rhythmic breathing pattern, and she followed.

* * *

Her dreams were wildly painful since she never took any potion when she spent the night with him. But she had taught herself to control her movements, biting her tongue when she woke to keep herself from screaming as tears ran down her face. She shied away from his body when this happened; she did not want to be loved better.

When he woke hours after she trashing and calling out a mix of Death Eaters and people of the Order, she pulled him into her embrace, eyes staring blankly ahead as she shushed him to sleep.

"It's not happening," she told him quietly as his hands locked around her waist and his forehead rested on her collarbone. She swallowed thickly as she listened his his racing heart so close to her. "Your at home; that time is over."

They never spoke of it as she ran her fingers comfortingly as his arm, staying away from his face which was hidden away. It happened often, heartbreakingly often so long after the war. But he was fighting his demons the best he could, just as she was learning to fight hers.

* * *

On that particular morning, she blinked her eyes to find his figure seated upright at the edge of the bed. Lazily, she pulled herself into a seated position against the back of the bed, her shoulders curling as she pulled the sheet around her.

"What are we doing?" he asked quietly, and she cursed the way his voice sounded.

She didn't say anything and looked away.

"This is all your fault," he told her, accusation creeping into his voice. "You made me need you. You can't just come and be with me and leave me like this."

The desperation rung in her ears, another disappointment, another loss. Faces spun behind her eyelids of all the people who she couldn't save, the people she wasn't enough for.

"You don't want someone like me," she told him in a soft voice, not daring to meet his eyes. "You knew what you signed up for. For gods sake, we used to be enemies."

"I'm trying every day," he hissed at her, and she could picture his eyes. Little scared her, but his wrath did.

"We would never work, don't you see that?" she countered, her voice rising. "Do you know what they'd all say to me? I - I have other people who are counting on me, who need me and who are waiting for me to be me again. Nobody said you had to love me."

She was cruel, and she knew it. She saw the way he looked at her when they lay naked in the sheets well past midnight, sometimes talking, sometimes not. She knew the way his face fell every time she turned away each time he leaned towards her.

"You think you can go out and find someone else when you fix yourself," he spit out. "But you're never going to be unbroken. It's going to stay in you in ways that others won't understand, not even Ron. You're like me, and you can't stand to admit it, that there is something in you that needs someone like me because I get it."

"Don't compare me to you!" she yelled back vehemently, turning to face him, still clutching the sheet to her chest. "I am nothing like you!"

But yet she was lying to herself. She found him one day after seeing the look in his eyes upon passing by a war memorial. He knew this too.

"If you came here looking to fuck the Death Eater's son, then get out," he said, his voice snake-like and calm.

And she did, using her wand to dress herself and even flicking it to make the bed, the sheets tucked so tightly they puckered.

"I don't regret this," she told him honestly, searching his eyes for one last thing to hold on to. "I'm going to travel. I don't know if I'm coming back. Ever."

"You'd be surprising a lot of people, I'll give you that," he called after you. "Just know you won't be surprising me."

* * *

Three months later, after a particularly grueling day of work, he received a letter.

_Dear Draco,_

_You were right. I am broken. I have accepted this, and I am learning to face what I feel again._

_I do not know if I could have ever loved you. I think I could have. All I know is that I see you in the vast oceans of the Mediterranean and in the endless deserts of Egypt. I find that I like my coffee with two sugars and no cream like you had it, and I even imagine you laying in bed with me on nights I cannot sleep._

_When the year is over, I will return to my home and my job. I think that I will be able to seem unbroken for Ron, and I will be with him because I owe it to him. I am a part of that, and I cannot leave the people I care about. I do regret never having the chance to really recognize how much I could care about you._

_Enclosed you will find a feather that I myself found in an exotic part of Africa. It is from a magical creature that I have not yet discerned, but it glows yellowish gold in the dark. I was thinking you could put it next to your bed, and even though it's silly, I think it helped me with my nightmares. I don't have them so much anymore._

_I think in a different life we could have been together. Sometimes I am surprised at the capacity for bad that I hold, and being with you for that time made me aware of the good within you. It makes me wonder whether we are products of ourselves or made up of small parts of others. It is a question you have helped me pose and that I wish to one day answer. I will be content with living as I know how now, however. _

_So I just want you to know all of this. I am so sorry for whatever pain I have caused, and I hope this offers the smallest of explanations._

_Please do not try and see me after I return. I hope that you understand._

_With love,_

_Hermione_

He started reading the letter many times, finishing it only after three days of anger at starting it and then casting it aside. He contemplated writing her back or even trying to find her - he couldn't make out if her last line had been an invitation of sorts. In the end, he decided something small would suffice.

* * *

_Hermione,_

_Thank you._

_Draco_

A small parcel accompanied the letter, and she reached to open it. A golden ring fell out with a small, round gem with a moving haze inside of it.

She recognized it instantly as the same consistency as the glass ball he kept next to his bed with the ghoulish faces. But it was not a deep gray any longer, but much lighter with a tinge of blue. If she squinted, she could make out the semblance of an almost contented set of eyes among the mist but they hastily disappeared and were replaced by another calming pair.

It was the first time she'd felt at peace in years.


End file.
